


every little thing (is magic, magic, magic)

by dinosaur



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Beltane, Established Relationship, Fae & Fairies, Light Dom/sub, Magical Realism, Magical Tattoos, Multi, Other, POV Alternating, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, Trans Character, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 18:37:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10950384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: Harry and Zayn whisper their love in charms across Niall’s skin and Niall keeps their future like a treasure map on the backs of his worn and well kissed knuckles.Lá Bealtaine brings embers of their past into all of their hearts. But, Lá Bealtaine also brings cascades of summer rain into the sweet, simple present.





	every little thing (is magic, magic, magic)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexenglish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexenglish/gifts).



> for the prompt: "witches Narry celebrating Belthane at a festival w other magical creatures and fae and meet fairy Zayn who's immediately intrigued by them (bonus if Zayn is secretly mischievous, I loooove that). shenanigans ensue." + "transboy niall, genderfluid harry and trans girl zayn."
> 
> changed it a bit bc i love the choncept of established relationship playing out through magic and the lil intimacies that brings, but think i stayed with the feel of the prompt. 
> 
> as always, thanks for the combthrough and support from my betas, y'all are the bestest <3

 

 

 

Lá Bealtaine smells like becoming.

Like the forest as the fire settles into spring, like the crunch of cinnamon into mortar, like coming to the end of a spell and finding the last syllables already tucked clean into Harry and Zayn’s mouths.

Niall loves it.

He steps around yet empty bonfire circles on the way back to the cottage, with the crunch of nuts and leaves underfoot and the waves of trees building along the crooked path. There’s something about coming back to the root of this, the root of a magick older than the bones that line the walkways, the trees that whisper with the wind – that enfolds Niall’s chest with ease.

Here, in the forest, with just the rest of the coven alliances and faerie mounds, Niall relaxes.

Magic is easier. Hope is simpler. Love is bolder.

The cottage stands in-between two great rowans. The lines of the stories are tall, improbable seen from the corners of eyes and impossible seen right on. Faerie magic from Zayn has seeped into the wards, twisted into the foundation and made an echo of a faerie mound, wayward hallways and hidden rooms. Traces of Harry’s touch curl around the doorframe, yellows in shades of primrose, gorse, and marsh marigold, blessed thrice over and sung over from seed. The matching outlines of the thatched roof and wobbly stones thrum on Niall’s knuckle as he steps over the property line.

The spell catches, wraps him tight.

He breathes out and it releases, a tendril of air curling over the tattoo as it goes.

Through the underwater glass window pane, Niall can see Harry and Zayn in the kitchen. The soft light flickers and sways to the rhythm of their hips. Harry’s candles form smoke shapes that trace their movement back and forth across the oak floor. A tug of magic pulls the air around the window in, the forest stilling in its space as if to listen.

Niall wonders what Zayn is singing this time.

Rain starts, light and gentle.

It curves around the window, leaves the moment untouched.

Niall activates a waxing charm for the herb basket in his arms and watches for a while longer, smiling.

 

\---

 

They celebrate their anniversary in bits and pieces.

The first bit is here. Echoing the night they first met, summoning a faerie on the eve of Beltane for a luck blessing. Harry and Niall were both stupidly young, stupidly in love with magic, stupidly stupid. Now, the garden is on its own in a sea of trees, violets in posies, but without the St. John’s wort. There’s no need for protection this time. They want to be swept up in each other’s magic.  And getting lost in each other’s eyes is the best journey.

Harry twirls Zayn across the kitchen stones. Zayn is singing something soft and low in Arabic and she trails off with a glance to the door a second before Niall comes in.

He’s damp from the rain, clovers and whatever else safe in a giant basket. The door swings shut of its own accord and locks kindly.

“Babe,” Zayn says, just as gentle.

“Irish,” Harry echoes.

He flushes a bit and comes to them. Harry presses the three of them close, ash and earth and rain.

Later, when they are back to their splurge of an apartment in the city, high and safe in the clouds, with Zayn’s sidhe gardens trailing after her and Niall’s paper crows of spells perching on the ceilings, they’ll celebrate more. They’ll celebrate each other.

For now, they linger against each other, simple and close. Magic is a breath shared and a touch transferred along all their hands.

A triangle is the strongest sided form, Harry thinks.

At dusk, they hold hands and just sit.

At twilight, they follow each other up the winding stairs to bed.

“Low,” Niall murmurs, activating the light charm.

Harry puts their hands on Niall and Zayn’s hips with something like relief. The tense runes of their scratchy magic calm under their skin and it’s just here, now, this. Turning from a Niall kiss to a Zayn kiss. Losing their breath at the power of Zayn’s own unfolding magic.

Sex with a faerie is strange.

Zayn glows in the moonlight, a shade of dark gold that coalesces in the corners of her eyes, the soft tuck of her elbow, the lines of her hips.

Harry’s never sure if it’s a trick of the magic of Zayn or no trick at all; just Zayn herself.

Harry thinks they’re probably far enough gone on Zayn that the light wouldn’t need to trick them for anything. She would burn starlight bright, stretch out a hand of power to Harry and Niall’s spines and they would melt into her before she could touch them.

 _I believe_ , Harry thinks. _I believe she glows._

Zayn’s hand comes up to cover Harry’s eyes so she doesn’t blind them as she comes. Beside them, Niall laughs and laughs, heaving against Harry’s spine and Harry knows Zayn’s other hand is over Niall’s eyes. The magic rings around Harry’s head, holds them still until Zayn finishes with a long, stuttering gasp.

They breathe for a moment, together.

Then, the magic releases its hold like lips trailing down and off their cheek.

Harry breathes in too hard, nearly chokes. Zayn’s hand comes down to their throat, thumb slotting under their chin gently. They shiver for her.

“Good?” Zayn asks, voice deep, deep as the Sea.

Harry nods, to feel the weight of Zayn’s hand, eyes still closed.

“Niall?”

“Green,” Niall whispers from right behind Harry, breath tickling the nape of Harry’s neck.

They shiver now for him.

Harry has the fleeting wonder if this is what Niall feels like when Harry and Zayn catch him between them to rework the charms laid along his skin – surrounded and pinned in place. They wonder if he feels the love scrawling through his skin to the bone underneath. The spelled flowers on Harry’s arms and stomach itch with contained energy.

Niall’s hand, the right one, with the outline of the cottage they are ensconced in, the charm Harry laid – curls around Harry’s ribs.

Zayn’s hand is still on Harry’s neck and she uses her thumb to till Harry’s head back onto Niall’s shoulder. Her lips come down across the underside of their jaw, kissing a bruised trail to their collarbones at the same time Niall presses an open-mouthed kiss to Harry’s delt. He meets Zayn for a moment, their kiss smooth and biting, right beside Harry, still held firm in between them.

Waiting. 

This time, the cottage wards shiver with Harry.

“Easy, love,” Niall whispers. 

He pushes against Harry’s back, hot and slick and Zayn caresses her hand down, down, down Harry’s body. Harry slips under the pleasure and into the rhythm of their magic locking together, whispered incantation after incantation.

 

\---

 

Zayn wakes up lazy.

It’s lighting day. May day.

In the sky, a tempestarii has woven a sun spell to keep the rain high and frozen. It calls to Zayn as she stretches against the sheets. She sighs and cypress and vanilla rolls over her tongue. Harry is still under the quilt then. Zayn curls a smile. She supposes she and Niall did wear them out.

The bathroom is refreshingly warm, still humid and Zayn wanders downstairs, looking for the blonde source.

The walls are quiet in the early afternoon.

She misses her hanging gardens, their curling songs of greeting as she walks the halls to the kitchen in the morn before she’s even quite awake. She misses the air plants that follow her like birds to wind. She even misses Harry’s mushroom-floral hybrid projects, in new floor cubbies that appear every other week and Niall’s handwritten spells, in folders and hard drives and scrawling lines frozen in midair. The cottage has pleasant metamorphic rock, a warm flavor to her senses, but she’s grown used to their skyscraper. Up on the 40th floor with gardens and solar panels and the comfortable resonance of glass and copper carbon, she feels one with the clouds.

For so long, she had thought the sky belonged to the humans.

Harry and Niall were the first ones to show her different.

Of course, she was the first to show Harry and Niall just how different the magic of the forest could be. So there supposes some equivalency.

The kitchen door opens to Niall, hips moving back and forth as he stands, half naked and brewing something in a bronze pot. The blue light catches against the oak cabinets and herb-citrus strings strung across them like fairy lights. Silly, Zayn thinks, how applicable that human term is. Piles of half melted candles from linger on the surfaces. A little rebellion of Niall’s against Harry’s superfluous use.

Zayn tucks a smile behind a hand and announces herself with a slight shimmer of green glamour across the trees on Niall’s wrists.

Laughter sparks light in Niall’s chest, crossing the room loudly. He turns to Zayn and she drops her hand so she can smile at him.

“Morning, witchie,” Zayn says and drifts around a basket of violets – her favorite, to kiss Niall’s temple.

“Morning, faerie,” Niall kisses her back.

“You’re using bronze pots, now? Thought humanity had graduated a bit, mm?”

Niall laughs for her again. “Throwback Monday.”

Zayn hums.

There’s no iron in this cottage. Like there’s no iron in their apartment and no salt and plenty of sunlit space between them and the metals of their neighbors.

Zayn’s never said anything, but it doesn’t matter. They’ve always known.

“What are you brewing?”

Niall grins, “Estrogen.”

Chuckling, Zayn reaches around him for one the pasties, still on the counter from the day before. She shirks the fresh charm sewn across the cloth over the plate and pulls one out to delicately nibble. “Harry will be pleased.”

“Hope so,” Niall says, adding a tiny graduated cylinder of something.

“Know so.”

“Well,” Niall smiles into his shoulder, “You can’t lie.”

“That’s right,” Zayn nods and pushes a bag of blood red candles over to sit on the counter.

They’re quiet for a moment. Niall flits in between the cauldron and the window and his written spells and Zayn watches him lazily. Half-naked and covered in their marks is a good look on Niall. She eats another pasty and admires the twin bites at the outer corners of the neat scar lines on Niall’s pecs.

Artful.

Niall turns the burner down with a low whistle and Zayn admires that too.

“Nice, babes.”

Niall grins and starts collecting the token bags for the tree burning. They’ve somehow managed to spread them across the entire house in just two days. Maybe they’re spontaneously multiplying. Did one of them get set on a hex somewhere? Maybe they’ve been cursed by a rabbit.

Niall sighs and digs one from the couch cushions.

“Ought to just summon the lot of them, really,” Zayn offers, swinging her legs a bit.

“Nah, then I’d have to have a couple hundred more calories, yunno?” Niall drops the couch token bag in the giant basket. The table wobbles.

Zayn hums and reaches out to steady Niall as he leans up to the top of the cabinet over the sink for the applewood carving to bag up.

“So, no plans for a late faerie summoning, either?” Zayn asks innocently.

Niall blushes Zayn’s favorite red.

“No.”

“No?”

“Think we need one?” Niall asks, tilting into the space between Zayn’s legs like he can’t help himself.

“No,” Zayn leans forward to lick a smooth line across Niall’s bottom lip, “I think you’re well anointed,” she runs her finger across Niall’s brow, “well blessed.”

Niall’s warm. The electric blue of his eyes sends a crackle of breathless joy through Zayn.

“We’re so lucky to love you,” Niall says.

And Zayn, Zayn who has lived lifetimes, Zayn who has touched the bare power of magic with her own melting hands, Zayn who answered a longing little spell in a garden with a crumbling stone wall with no greater summons than curiosity - Zayn has never known a conviction, a devotion like those of these two humans.

Niall doesn’t so much say the truth. He writes it. She takes his hands and feels the truth written across his skin.

“You sound sure,” Zayn says, curled into him.

Niall smiles, a small beautiful thing.

“Know the future, don’t I?”

And the amazing thing is, he does.

Goddess, the things feyfolk would do with his magic. It scares her sometimes, knowing the specifics, imagining if the high court knew what she knows, what Niall can know. Who can tell what his powers would be if they used it for something a little less self-indulgent, a little less illustrative and a little more persuasive.

The luxury of small magicks is not something she knew before Niall.

She tugs him into her body and presses her palms against his spine. They throb with the rush of power, resonating with the contained flow of Zayn’s magic in the not-ink images of the future of the three of them – a telescope birthday gift for Niall, a missed pho lunch turned argument, a random drive to the country to find what trouble Liam and Louis are brewing up, more that Zayn can’t read, won’t maybe until it comes to pass.

Niall keeps back just enough to keep looking her in the eyes.

“Alright?” he asks, voice soft.

Zayn clears her throat and pulls her hands off the sticky magic aura, flexing the bones. Her palms always want to let go of their tightly locked control. The Hand of Glow and The Hand of Fiat. Hands of power, Zayn thinks. Hands of potential horror.

She blinks long and then kisses Niall’s cheek.

“Ya, s’alright, Ni.”

“Mm,” Niall hums and presses a hand to Zayn’s tummy before pulling open some more cabinets to check for more tokens.

Zayn breathes in and out. Has another pasty.

“Good morning,” Harry pops around the door in a burst of flowers, bangles and bared skin.

Ah. Timing. “Afternoon H.”

“Clean up your candles,” Niall says, head inside a cabinet.

“You liked them last night,” Harry sniffs and goes over to kiss Zayn hello and slap Niall’s bum. They lean against the sink like they’re preparing to turn it into a hot tub.

Niall pulls back out of the pot cabinet with a glare, “I liked _you_ when you used to clean up your shit.”

“Zayn,” Harry drapes one of the lemon witches ladders from over the sink on top their head and turns wide eyes on Zayn, “Help me here.”

“It’s true,” Zayn says, “Harry’s never cleaned up their shit.”

“Oh right,” Niall snaps his fingers. “I forgot. I’ve _never_ liked you.”

“Niaaaall,” Harry whinges, clutching at the lemons.

Zayn stifles a laugh into a pasty.

Niall pushes up with a slight wince and both Harry and Zayn reach out for him.

He bats their hands off, “S’fine, s’fine.”

Zayn frowns.

Harry lets go of the lemons to tuck their fingers behind Niall’s ears. Their silver-lined fingers tangle so nicely with the moonbeam blue of Niall’s hair.

“I’ll make it better,” Harry whispers, and kisses Niall so sweetly.

Niall inhales and melts against Harry after only a second or two.

“Well,” he says, pulling back, “I guess I can forgive you for the candle apocalypse, if you’re gonna be all sweet and shit.”

“Oh, you flatterer,” Harry crinkles at him.

Niall huffs.

Lunch is a late fair of honeyed apples and lamb, neatly packed in Niall-marked containers. Zayn spends it with her legs against the back of Harry and Niall’s chairs while they bicker amicably about the state of the cottage and the ingredients of Harry’s medicine bag.

As soon as the dishes are lining themselves up for dunking in the soapy sink, Niall is up and pulling on boots.

The sky outside is twisting a daisy blue that says it’s almost time for the lighting. Zayn can feel it in her bones, the call of the magic building. Niall bleeds excitement into them but Beltane pulls them all in its wake. Harry has a jam tart and vibrates in place, submitting to Zayn draping their sheerest shirt over their shoulders. Zayn adjusts her hair in the blurred window reflection, pops a few more shades at the corners of the glamour’s dimensions just for the heck of it.

“Grab Josephine,” Niall tilts his head towards the center of the living room, where the small pine sits peacefully.

“Mm,” Harry licks their fingers one more time, “Which of us?”

“Grab. Josephine. Now,” Niall says, slinging the basket of token bags up into his arms and ducking out into the dusk.

Harry looks at Zayn. Zayn smiles back.

“That’s not fair,” Harry sighs.

“Pardon?”

“Your face.”

“I don’t have glamour on my face.”

“Yes,” Harry agrees and goes to heft Josephine for its journey to the bonfire circle. “That’s what’s unfair.”

Zayn smiles some more.

 

\---

 

The joy of Lá Bealtaine is this:

The fires, huge and humbling, lit by a combination of magicks from human and inhuman, fae and spirit.

Josephine, at home in the circle, waiting to join the hand lit timber, laden with token bags.

The forest, brimming fit to burst with life and hope and rejuvenation after a long winter’s wait.

Harry, with flowers woven through curls, tattoos curling and uncurling sinuously and well-aged, charmed jewelry lining their arms from biceps to fingertips. The merest suggestion of coverage in a spring-pink sheer long button down over curves plump and sun tanned.

Zayn, fluffy and shaved hair no less than 12 colours all at once but never more than one when you stopped to look, and solid black leather mail trousers. Matching ring finger rose to Harry, a bright trailing of stone studs from the top of her ears across to her nose and lip.

Niall, beside them, between them, their shared magic in a bared love across his fingers and wrists and spine. Bared tailbone up, he wears it out, without the magic wearing thin. Just a single beaten platinum bracelet with two changing coordinates, for grounding.

The three of them, hands interlaced and dancing, around and around the growing flames.

Zayn’s lips along Niall’s collar.

Niall’s cheek against Harry’s shoulder.

Harry’s hip to Niall’s hip.

Niall’s palm over Zayn’s thigh.

Zayn’s arm around Harry’s neck.

The crackle of the fire beats.

When the song slows, their hearts wild, the glow burns under Zayn’s skin, always brighter than any other night.

“One hour,” she kisses them each six times.

The familiar faerie mound is close, calling. Zayn will go, will fight or fuck, depending on the pitch of call, will get to come or cry out without fear of creating an elf-struck nightmare out of her lovers.

Harry and he kiss her back, bid her luck with twin grins and settle at one of moss cushioned logs, half over each other. Around them spins rituals, spells, even a scrying. Transactions in the form of words and weeds.

Niall lets it pass by distantly, eyes on the fire, magic thrumming under his skin, pushing at his eyes. The future isn’t as passive as wishing wells and crystal reflections. It fights for itself, twines its own thread and sharpens its own scissors.

Harry smooths one large palm across his knee, begins their annual healing incantation, other hand holding the medicine pouch they brought with Josephine. Smiling into Harry’s hair, Niall hooks a line of magic into the platinum at his wrist. One coordinate is where he is, and the other is close, but deep.

For a while, for this night, he allows himself to be pulled into the threads.

There’s the obvious ones, the one bold and carbon-hard, already knotted around his aura; the moth familiar Harry is destined to find, to almost lose themself to, already tattooed to Niall’s ribs. The break and distance that Zayn will need at the four year, nine month mark, splashed across Niall’s kidneys, still aching. The richter lines of anxiety Niall gets for no reason other than life, jagged on his nape. The smaller things, in between and around.

They’ve talked about it all, but Niall figures it’s the same way nulls go round and round without charmed compasses. There’s only so many times you can talk through the same thing before you can’t find words.

Sometimes they remember, sometimes they forget. Mostly, they just be with each other.

Course, then there’s other futures, possibilities on thin threads dangling almost too quick to comprehend; a life of lonely him and Zayn, magic-ful but city-less in the country, Niall and Harry in a cold, wood loft tender with care but missing something, something, Zayn and Harry, fucking like it’s their last breath, a lifetime only in a few days.

There’s a gentle touch at his too-warm spine.

He blinks his eyes away from the possibilities –– and back to Harry’s too-bright eyes.

They’re staring at him still, hand holding him close.

“The fire makes your eyes look chartreuse.”

Harry blinks, lips curving up.

“What do you see?” Harry asks, tilting closer.

“Like the liqueur, you remember?”

“Niall,” Harry presses their lips to the top of Niall’s ear.

“Beautiful green,” Niall presses his lips to the center of Harry’s throat.

“Was it bad?”

Harry’s always asking that, asking not after the images on Niall’s skin, but the ones in his eyes. It’s as if the invisible horizon line behind and in front of them bothers Harry more than the hills beneath their feet.

Niall sighs, kisses the satin of Harry’s shirt, curling into the bow of Harry’s chest.

Some of it. But – “It wasn’t ours.” Wasn’t any of them of now, any of their futures.

A pause.

“Is that bad?”

“No,” Niall says.

“Then why –“

“There’s no use wondering, Harry,” he says, not a plead but – “There’s no gain in casting for a thin thread of a future that could only take from us, could only be less than what we are.”

“Do _you_ believe that?” Harry asks.

 _Or does the chaotic neutral future believe that_ , hangs between them.

Hands wrap around Niall’s waist, thumbing at his ribs and he jumps, before one of the hands warms, a gentle throb Niall knows could burn a hole right through him, if Zayn was just a bit less practiced.

Niall relaxes back into Zayn’s hold, the flat, strong support of her chest.

“I believe that Niall knows how best to translate his own visions, Harry.”

Niall smiles a bit.

Then wonders if Zayn saw anything. She’s not one of the fae that tends towards foresight, has never had the ability, but sometimes new powers sprout after firestorms of magic like Lá Bealtaine. And the cottage has been responding exceptionally well to Zayn’s presence, growing spaces like buds every couple of days.

“Do you believe anything other than what we are would be _less_?”

There’s something in Harry’s voice. A peculiar sort of instability of chagrin.

Niall pulls enough away just to look at Harry’s face. Their eyes are still unbelievably bright against the molten light.

It’s Zayn who responds, words weighted with more years than Niall or Harry imagine. “We can _change_ without being other, H,” Zayn’s hand tightens. “We _have_ _changed_ without being less. We will change.”

 _Four years, nine months,_ Niall thinks. He closes his eyes and breathes.

“It’s not.” Harry starts, “Not the change, I know we have to – “ Harry cuts themselves off, sighs and tugs on one of their own curls, “How can we not know? We know so much,” Harry’s other hand presses against Niall’s spine. “How can we not know these other ones?”

Ah.

“Not everything is a knowing, Harry,” Niall says, kindly, “Some things are wishes you make come true.”

“And some you make sure don’t come true,” Harry whispers.

“Yeah,” Zayn whispers back and moves to encircle Harry and Niall both in her arms.

Niall presses his face in-between them and breathes in the smell of ash, of vanilla bark, of sunny jasmine. Harry’s nose tickles his ear.

Niall wouldn’t trade his magicks for anything – they’re part of him and a part of what makes them so good together, he knows. Harry and Zayn sometimes need a go-between, a weight to measure Harry’s need of knowing and Zayn’s need of experiencing out equally into a brew that doesn’t bubble over the lip of the kettle. The tattoos do that. He does that.

When it’s Lá Bealtaine though, everything is more. Including this.

“It bothers me, not – “ Harry trails off.

“I know, H.” And he does. “Love you.”

Harry sighs. “Love you both too.”

Zayn kisses Niall’s temple and they linger there, at the edge of the flames, with the rain locked in the sky. People pass around them, chatty, happy, burgeoning with the promise of magic. Josephine sits, waiting for them, ready.

“We should look for the demi-fey,” Zayn says, words light and like the beginnings of a charm.

Niall pulls away looks down at his hands, the start lines of the field with circles and circles of bright fey, flickering in the light of the fire.

He looks up to find both of them watching him, expressions soft.

“First,” he says, “Josephine.”

He holds his hands out to them.

“Then, the embers,” Harry takes his right hand.

“Then, the demi-fey,” Zayn takes his left hand. 

 

\---

 

Harry loves the way the forest loves Beltane.

You just have to stop at a crossroads and the trees will offer directions, in script, sound and sight. The tree branches curve over the three of them as they walk, gentling the fall of the rain. In between Harry’s hands is a sphere of their combined spellwork, with a bundle of embers popping happily away. At home – at the cottage, they’ll put all but a few of them to bloom in the hearth, to burn happily away until next may. The last bits will go home, to the smooth wall mounted fireplace that normals see bright blue and assume as electric. Harry hugs the sphere closer and grins.

It’s the best part, having a tiny piece of the festival always with them.

It keeps their magicks warm and ready all year long and in exchange, they burn through a steady supply of garlands and bouquets. The toasted coconut of gorse blooms is so intrinsically home, now, a sense-memory Harry doubts they will ever get tired of lingering over.

“Are you leading us stray from the path?” Niall asks, as they all step over a log in the middle of the way.

Harry realizes the path has gotten closer, the trees pressing themselves close to their arms. Leaves curl briefly around their arms before letting go.

“Would I do that?” Zayn asks, voice a song.

“Yes,” Harry and Niall say.

Zayn giggles.

Niall rolls his eyes and offers his hand to Harry. Harry takes his wrist gently and holds his hand still as they kiss the compass beside his right thumb. The quicksilver flash of magic tingles across Harry’s lips, pulls a small noise from Niall.

Behind Niall, Zayn’s eyes flash and she grins with too many teeth. It’s not hard to remember that Zayn is a faerie, but Beltane is when she likes to remind them.

The compass on Niall’s hand spins and spins until he closes his eyes and goes lax in Harry’s hand and it stops. The tiny arrow points left of their path. Harry taps Niall’s wrist to get his eyes open and he glances down and then left, sighs.

Zayn hooks a thumb down the path. “Onwards?”

“Is it the right way?” Niall asks, bland.

“The journey’s the right way, the fun part,” Zayn says, tongue in teeth.

They sigh.

Zayn holds a hand out – The Hand of Glow. Capable of melting carbon with a finger. “Do you trust me?”

They both go to her.

“Yes,” Harry says.

“Yeah, Aladdin,” Niall says, touching his hand briefly to Zayn’s.

Zayn’s grin softens, turns content.

“C’mon babes.”

The trail is winding, a path less through the forest and more a following of the spaces between the trees. Zayn never seems lost, but then again she never does. Not at home in a sprawling city, let alone in a forest as old as she is that she resonates her magic with. Night blossoms slowly, opening primroses and orchids. Glow disperses from Zayn’s hand, just enough to see their feet, playing with the moonlight that stops just above their heads.

Zayn hums intermittently and Niall joins her sometimes, leaving off in a giggle.

The trees begin to grow taller.

Bigger and bigger birches line the path. Older and older, as they near the hearts of the forest.

Finally, they come to the stump of an elder, worn smooth and thrumming with power. Incongruous in the space of magnificent, towering trunks.

Harry breathes out and takes Zayn’s hand as Niall does on the other side.

She takes them a step forward and the world slides and compresses before popping outward in a rush. Just like slipping between a chair and a wall, Harry thinks, breathing deep as their vision clears and the world before them rights itself.

A wobbly sphere of a field splays out in front of them, sparkling with thousands of tiny demi-fey, rainbows alight in the power of Beltane and perched or dancing throughout. The coven that allies with them is a modern one, and Harry always delights to see the glass flowers they imbue with blessings and gifts all year long and set so carefully out for the fey to take and collect into fields of their magic. It’s a gift of nature and of agency, to choose how to arrange them, how to use them and the seeds inside. Harry approves.

Zayn does whatever shift of glamour it is that makes their power clear to the lower fey and the flow of lights halts, and then turns towards her.

She laughs, light and delighted and echoes their light. Zayn follows them deeper into the field, hair glinting and shifting through too many colours to follow. Her glamour gets so happy here.  

“Gorgeous,” Niall whispers, beside Harry.

They smile and kiss his cheek. “So’re you.”

Niall blushes for them and then wanders off with the basket of libation vials and floral pastries to spread among the fey.

Like they did last year and the year before, Harry settles under the young hazel tree in the center of the field. It was hit by lighting as a sapling, a pain like a lancing blow to the demi-fey of the forest, three Beltanes ago as Harry was working their healing incantation on Niall. Deep into the healing magic, Harry had caught the ripple of pain from the tree and –

And the rest is history, is the present, here.

Harry tests the edges of the tree’s aura gently, just checking over it, making sure it is growing strong and healthy.

When Harry finally looks up, Niall and Zayn are stilled, close by each other. The lights of the demi-fey have shifted as a wave to the far side of the field where -

The white stag has emerged from the trees.

It noses gently at a startling pink fey swaying on top of one of the stems. A twitter of happy glamour rolls over the multicoloured wave of fey, rippling the fabric of the air with light.

Harry holds their breath.

The stag moves slowly across the far side of the field, hooves never once catching glass. Whichever fey it brushes, brightens like a shower of sparks, before soothing to a gentle, pulsing brightness. Power runs electric through the stag’s entire form, half in this dimension, half out. More solid than any ghost and seemingly more okay with their presence than Harry would ever, could ever have hoped to believe.

For a split second, the stag raises its head and Harry catches a glint of its black eyes as it glances over them.

It bowls through Harry.

Serene, the stag turns back to nosing at the demi-fey around it.

Harry presses a hand to the ground for balance, struck with the conviction of the power of this moment, the power of them, here, witness to this olde magick. There are things in magic that don’t reveal themselves unless they are sure of you. The stag is one of them.

They must all be a sure thing.

No matter that their future still has tangled webs uncollected in the wind. No matter how much they don’t know, magic does.

Harry breathes in.

The moment doesn’t break.

Quiet noises of wings, the whisper of air, the white noise music of the trees, holds steady.

Harry watches as the stag eases its way into a cloud of brilliant blue fey. Closer by, Niall and Zayn ease their way to Harry.  They shuffle so their back is to the hazel and there’s room in the small clearing around the tree. Slowly, Niall sits down as the stag bends on its forelegs to reach a small fey balanced precariously on a bulb. Zayn follows onto the ground, gaze locked on the stag.

“A herald of a quest to come,” Harry says, wonder turning into formality.

“A great blessing,” Zayn says, voice low and eyes hundreds of years away. “A great blessing for a great quest to come.”

Niall’s hands clench and unclench. Swallowing hard, Harry looks away from him and back to the glimmering stag and then back again.

 

Catching their eyes, Niall speaks softly, “Think we’re pretty certain that our greatest quest is each other.”

Harry kisses him because they can’t do anything else.

Niall murmurs against their lips and then Zayn is there, hand on her favorite spot on Harry’s thigh and shining so hard it brings tears to Harry’s eyes.

 

\---

 

Home, back the cottage in the small hours of the morning. The tipping wood and stone stands cold and dark. All of their teeth chatter, a pull of energy after the unconscious resonance with the field, the demi-fey – _the white stag._

It feels like a fevered dream to Zayn and she shakes herself, holds the truth of it like a stone in her chest, cherishing the weight of it.

These two humans . . .

“Shirt, shirt, shirts and jeans,” Niall mutters and winds his way upstairs.

Harry heaves in a shaky breath once more and then curls around the ember orb.

Zayn clears her throat, stretches out her arms. “Hearth, H.”

“I’m going.”

Harry stands still.

Zayn raises one eyebrow.

Harry curls tighter.

“I’ll trade you for it.”

“Yeah, what’re you trading?”

Zayn holds out her right hand, The Hand of Glow.

Harry glances down at it and then turns on their heel to put the orb on the living room coffee table, laid out with a silk cloth.

They turn to him with hands out and Zayn goes gladly, hand coming up over Harry’s chest, to rest on over their heart. Both of them sigh out happily and Zayn lets the tiniest bit of the power free to warm the both of them. She can’t help swaying a bit, just because it’s Harry and they’re here.

Harry noses her sideburns.

Niall returns to the living room like a well organized tidal wave, sweeping Zayn up and into a black spade shirt and Harry somehow into two shirts and soft jeans. He taps their nose pointedly when Harry sighs.

“Fire?” Niall doesn’t seem cold, only putting on a hanging, thin tank. But Zayn feels the pinprick of a charm on the back tag and knows this is one of Niall’s warmed ones. She smiles.

“Please.”

“I can do it,” Zayn says. Harry is curled up into themself, still looking a cross between poleaxed and wonderous.

“Mmm,” they hum, fingers twitching, “What are you gonna use?”

“Emoji spell,” Zayn says, to put a thorn in Harry’s thistle.

“No,” Harry half-shouts, popping upright “you are not.”

Zayn giggles.

Niall plants his hands on his hips, “Zayn.”

“It’s _Beltane_ , Zayn. You can’t use an _emoji_ spell.”

Zayn uses a second to brush some ash off her arms into the large ash sachet sitting on the coffee table next to the orb. It’ll be plump by the time Harry and Niall are done with it. _Goddess_ , they were covered in Beltane ash in front of a white stag and it accepted them, head, hair and hearts.

She focuses herself. “Do my emoji spells self preserve?”

“Yes, but –“

“Are they more powerful than sigil work or circlecasts?”

Harry makes a tortured, “AghhA.”

Niall’s face scrunches up and he looks Zayn over for a moment, before looking over at Harry. Zayn takes the moment that Harry closes their eyes and heaves a humongous sigh to wink at Niall. His eyes flicker for a moment, face freezing and then crinkling up into pure joy. He stuffs his fingers in his mouth to smother his laugh.

Zayn watches him and feels warm down to the tips of her toes.

“It’s the Principle of The Matter, Zayn,” Harry hisses, turning to Zayn fully.

Harry flicks a flower from their hair at Zayn and it catches on her arm, flattens with the last of Harry’s magic into one soft imprinting piece. Zayn pulls it up to reveal the faint scores of a sunflower. It’s whimsical. She’ll let it stay a bit.

Harry watches Zayn’s fingers on the line of it, lingering on the delicate live rose on the left ring finger, and glancing at the gently rolling wave on the right. They’re bright, content. Mementos of Harry and Niall clasped close and safe.

Harry catches her eyes.

“You’re fucking with me.”

Niall’s laughter spills out.

“Not yet babe, but we can do that after you light the hearth.” Zayn blows the flower back. It plants delicately on the arch of Harry’s cheekbone.

Harry’s eyes flutter. It warms Zayn from the belly out.

 _Soon_ , Zayn thinks, _soon_.

“Alright,” Niall says, laughing some more, fingers trailing down Harry’s back quickly, “Let’s get to.”

She does use an emoji spell, she can’t lie – but not for the embers themselves, but the hearth – which needs cleaning and tending to before they place the fire. Lest they upset a deity or two with a careless treatment of their May fire. As she types the spell out, on Niall’s phone because technology is so hard to keep track of, Harry sets the orb carefully in position and begins the circle casting. Niall ferries errant ash to the bag and folds it safely away.

“Good?” Zayn asks and waits for nods before she hits enter.

The magic springs from the phone already coalesced into being.

Foamy and roaring, the wave strikes first, contained at the sides and bottom, spilling upwards happily, with sprinkles of clovers following. Then, a magnifying glass to focus the next wave into the nooks and crannies, with a bouquet for a floral rub. A sign cutting off the water, and a recycling symbol to send the flora up, up and out. Finally, a small box tornado to dry. Zayn breathes out as the last emojis activate, a rush of magic through her fingers, leaving her arm too-warm, and the circular array lines push to the edges of the hearth to create a charged space for Harry to work.

They kiss her cheek quickly and then spin back towards the embers. One arm band is already in their hand, being pressed to the top of the orb, carefully as a cookie cutter through light dough. The topmost circle of the orb pulls away with the band and Harry sets it aside on a cloth. Then, Harry draws off three identical bracelets. One of those, Zayn knows, has her own hair at the core, another: Niall. A powerful gift to give to anyone, let alone someone already with a piece of her own heart.

She catches Niall’s eye and knows he’s feeling the same wave of emotion in his chest, because Harry never ever wears these except on Beltane, for this purpose, binding them all the same to the blessings of the flame.

Harry draws the casting smoothly up from around the orb, threading it into one bracelet after another, into the hearth.

Immediately, half of the embers go. Their flickers are willing, happy, travelling of their own accord, following through the line of Harry’s bracelets like skipping rocks.

They all make heartfelt sounds when the fire bursts tall, and stays.

The renewal is almost as good as Beltane dew, but all the more personal, here in a cottage made of their own hands and magicks. It will feel almost better in the apartment, where they have laced themselves even deeper into the foundations. Then, it will feel complete.

Here, they linger around the flames, saying a few more thanks to the magicks and closing the orb as smoothly as possible.

The embers spark away inside and Niall wraps the orb in its silk and pats it gently.

Zayn watches the assured movements. Niall’s hands are always exquisite and right now the tattoos are at their most lovely. Beside her, Harry bites their lip, watching too.

“Do you wanna do the next charm?” Niall asks, demur, hands crossing neatly to show off the perfect map across his fingers, the strong lines of the fey field bold and fulfilled. What Zayn knows now to be a white stag, faint but nearly glowing in the center. The open boat echoing it on the other side is still a metaphor, still them, still feels like Niall sounds singing to Harry and to Zayn, _“Got a river for a soul, and baby you’re a boat.”_

He smiles, a flash of starlight, and pulls off his clothes carefully. The shirt is folded carefully, the jeans following.

Zayn swallows.

It’s not sexual. Sex is easy, sex is a casual exchange. This, this is Niall, body bared and soul supple for their hands and magic.  

“Don’t look at me like that,” Niall says, sing-song.

They write their love across his skin. Their love for him, their love for each other. As their medium, he keeps himself clear of any spelled attachments, wears no adornments, touches no one but them, is touched by no one but their magicked hands.

It’s what he chose.

He’s a keeper, a magpie of love. He never erases a line.

He giggles, “Actually, do.”

As if they would ever do anything else.

Zayn reaches for him with the same charm Harry does.

 

\---

 

Niall lays awake long after they’ve all finished with the libations and settling of charms, long after they've finished touching each other and Harry and Zayn have slipped into sweet dreams.

He’s between them, one arm to Harry’s and one arm to Zayn’s, watching the way the tattoos begin to shift and swirl as the charm affects the pigment. The train cars begin first, on the pinkies, rail lines unbending from fey flowers. It’s slow. Nearly a month-long charm for Lá Bealtaine means maybe a full day for the charm to embed itself deep.

Love magic is resilient.

Outside, rain starts a light patter as daylight breaks, the weave of the dry spell finally, gentle-as-can-be coming loose.

The cottage stretches a bit, wards thrumming on quietly like the aircon back home.

Harry murmurs half a spell about it, brow wrinkling.

“Shh,” Niall whispers back, “S’okay Haz.”

They murmur again, then settle, sighing out.

Niall turns over on his stomach. He tucks his arms under Harry’s and Zayn’s, brings each hand to cup each of their shoulder blades. Buried face-first in the pillow, he is safe, he is theirs.

He doesn’t really need to keep them locked so tight. He knows they’ve got the kind of love that’s got magic that lives on, and on and on. But still, he holds on.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3
> 
> [fic post](http://wepush.tumblr.com/post/160860443785/every-little-thing-is-magic-magic) | [fic tag](http://wepush.tumblr.com/tagged/elt) | [all fics](http://wepush.tumblr.com/tagged/ficsies)


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